


Lands Both Meadow and Lea

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson and Hughes, and spring. [Features lyrics from Loreena McKennitt's The English Ladye and The Knight, written by Sir Walter Scott.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lands Both Meadow and Lea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mrsdickens713](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrsdickens713/gifts).



**_The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall._ **

They have never been on holiday together. There are many things they've never done together, and likely never will, but this is one that they'll cross off the list. He had wanted London, she's sure, but she had overridden him on that. Had insisted they go to the far countryside, to the clean air, to the slow, to the not-busy. She couldn't bear to think of being in yet another place filled with voices and people working and coming and going, couldn't bear to think of him on point as he always is. Had thought that if she brought him here, instead, he would take his ease, breathe in, breathe out. Let his shoulders drop from their perfect square. Yes, he has grumbled and complained, but he would have done that regardless of locale.

They walk, hand-in-hand, comfortably, leisurely, over the green footpath and she tilts her head back to take in the sun, to take in the light. There's little enough of it and she plans to soak it in, drink it up, stay outdoors until she can feel her very bones glowing with the yellow light. Plans to make him do the same. She had carefully packed his clothing, making sure not to take anything that wasn't lightweight, soft, easy to move in, easy to take off. Had spent some of her careful savings to purchase him a few summer things. She had been aghast to discover he _had_ no summer things; everything was black worsted wool, heavy starched cotton. She shouldn't have been, she supposes, she's worked by his side for fifteen years and never once seen him in anything approaching casual, anything remotely relaxed.

Things are different now. She sees to it. She sees to him, properly, the way only a wife can. Now she doesn't have to couch her concerns in suggestions, in questions, in carefully-packaged words. Now she can demand that he sit down, stop worrying, leave it be, go to bed, sleep another hour. Now she can take the liberties that have always been hers to begin with.

Beside her, he hums a little tuneless melody, scans the ground for wildflowers, for pretty pebbles. She sees his shoulders gently slope down and she smiles.

**_So perish all would true love part._ **

The heir of the house is dead, and his son just into the world, and Carson wonders if it will always be this way for his family. If one will have to die just as another comes into the world, if joy will always have to mingle so tightly with grief. The heir dead and his Lady Mary a cold thing now, a cold thing of ice and pain; she had touched his face when he went to her, touched his cheek with inhuman fingers, and she had not smiled for him. His Mary who always had a smile for him had been a blank, terrible, beautiful thing. Had asked him what she was supposed to do now and all of the usual platitudes - _go on for your child, go on for your now-gone husband, go on for Downton_ \- had faded from his throat, as they've always done with her. He had merely shook his head slowly, held her long fingers between his hands, tried to warm them. He had been her shelter for so many years; she had found her way to him throughout all of her girlhood, when she had gotten a bad mark in school, when her parents had scolded her, when a careless boy had caused insult. Even into womanhood, she had sought him out to harbor from a world that simultaneously exulted her and wanted to devour her, and he had always protected her, or tried to. Now he has nothing to offer, nothing but his warm palms and those fragile cold fingers between. He thought, perhaps, there was a speck of light when her fingers curled over and around his hand and squeezed gently - she had touched no one except her child for weeks, and here now, here maybe is something. Here maybe is the beginning of going on in that small flutter of broken wings in his hand.

I think maybe this is punishment, she had told him. For what, she didn't say and he didn't press. Before he left her, she looked a little more alive, a little less like that exquisite corpse.

Do what you want to do, Carson, always. I think that's what this is supposed to tell me. Because either way, we're all going to die before we're ready.

She had touched his face again before turning away, and all through the evening he could feel her fingerprints. Could feel the ghost of his daughter's hand, for isn't that what she is, it matters little who sired her, and her muted command to him.

_Do what you want to do, always, because either way we're all going to die before we're ready._

**_That Love may still be lord of all._ **

She had been reading in her parlor, taking a last cup of tea, trying not to think about all of the grief and loss and rage storming through the house for just a few minutes. She had never been fond of Mary, true enough, not even a little, but no young woman deserved to lose her beloved husband. No young mother deserved to be left with a day-old bairn and a heart filled with pain. He had opened her door without knocking, startled her. Her cup returned to saucer, her book pushed to the wayside, her heart in her throat. There had to be something else, some new horror, because his color is high and his eyes are dark and his jaw is taut.

Marry me, he had said. No preamble, no sentiment, no ring even. Hadn't even bothered to sit down. She had stared at him for a long moment of shock and confusion and disorientation, stared until he had repeated himself with a similar lack of frills.

Marry me.

She didn't ask what had brought it on, what had prompted it, because she knew and it didn't matter anyway and the only way to answer a question that sprung from the wells of the heart was in kind so she looked at him, looked at her hand, looked around her parlor. There was a fatherless child and a motherless one under that roof and a widow and a widower and all they'd known in that place was loss of the worst kind, all they'd known was mourning, all they'd known was black. She wouldn't marry him in white, no, but she'd marry him in green because she was tired of the dying season and spring would come to that house again, even if it came with a bride no longer blushing and a groom made of stone. She'd marry him in green, so she smiled, smiled at him until the granite line of his mouth began to soften and lift.

Yes, then, all right.

**_Now all ye lovers, that faithful prove._ **

They had married quietly in the registrar, with Mary as sole witness in her severe black gown; she had worn green as she had promised herself, he had gotten her a simple ring. They exchanged no presents, their first kiss was fleeting, a brush of linen against cotton, soft and dry and clean.

Mary had seen it done without a smile, but with a press of cold hands, a sigh of satisfaction. Had told them both they were required to take honeymoon for a weekend, three days, somewhere, anywhere, her gift to them, and they had accepted without complaint because Mary was not His Lordship, Mary was now the Widow Crawley with everything that meant. Deference and not arguing and bowed head. Elsie had blinked, blinked again. It was profane, this young woman in the weeds of sadness, all pallor and snow, all silence and solitude. She had blinked and understood then, in that moment, what she had truly done. What all of this really meant.

_That will be me someday. The Widow Carson, and everything that goes with it._

Her hands shook a little and he glanced at her, inquiring. She found a smile, put the thought from her mind. There was time enough for all of that when it came, there was no point in planning his funeral right then. Besides, she would have been his widow one way or another; one simply came with the title and one didn't. She would've laid out his clothes, spoken with the undertaker, packed away his things. They had been been faithful to one another - in a manner of speaking - for fifteen years. Marriage changed nothing, not really. A shared room, a shared bed, a shared name.

They left the registrar, and Mary accompanied them to the train station. Saw them onto their car with some last instructions.

Carson, if you want to stay longer, just telegram, telephone, anything. Stay as long as you please.

She backed away as their train departed with a last wave, and though they couldn't see it - they were far gone, removing overcoats, settling back in their seats, nestling in, chatting lightly - she smiled.

**_(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall.)_ **

(Mary had reserved them a room in a small inn. It was not grand but she knew perhaps they would not be comfortable in grandness. The walls were clean white pine, the curtains were soft netting, the bed was big and soft, there were windows all around. They had both smiled, pleased, it suited. She had unpacked their things, arranged them neatly in the bureau drawers. Had removed her green suit, her lace blouse, hung them carefully. When she turned, he was watching her, his face soft, pleading, silent, watching her as she stood there in the sunlight in her white corset and white underskirt and she had stopped then, stopped her housekeeping and bustling and smiled, slowly and with permission. With invitation.

Then his jacket was across a chair and she was lifted onto the vanity top and there was pushing and breathing and her slip shoved up and her knickers pulled off and his shirt unbuttoned and her holding him tightly, tightly with her arms and legs and him inside her and they were silent, so silent with the smallest of movements, with the most restrained of motions, with the quietest sounds. But her arms around him and his around her and his mouth against her hair and her face against his shoulder and they pressed closer, closer, closer.

There was so much light in that room, so much streaming sun in and around them, around them and inside them.)

**_Pray for their souls who died for love._ **

They attended church the next morning, for honeymoon was no excuse to shirk one's duty to God and King. What the sermon was, he'd never recall, she heard nothing of. They sat in their pew together, turned to the appropriate pages in their prayerbooks, stood and sat and sang and tithed, all without hearing a word.

But they prayed. With benediction, with convocation, with opening and closing prayers, at the altar when everyone else had left, they prayed. Prayed for children dead too soon and a beautiful living-dead woman trying to thaw, prayed for children without mothers, for husbands without wives, for mothers without sons. They prayed their own prayers, silently, looking up at the cross, and their thoughts came together, and apart, apart and together.

_Lord, keep him and bless him --_

_Lord, keep her and bless her --_

_Lord, keep them and bless them --_

Her hand quietly, tentatively creeps into his.

_Thank you, God._

He holds it, rubs his thumb over her fingers, her wrist.

_Thank you._

**_For Love shall still be Lord of all._ **

So they are walking the green footpath along Hadrian's Wall, some of it anyway, and they stop to rest. She perches lightly on a section of exposed stone and looks around with contentment. Nothing but countryside behind, nothing but countryside ahead. Nothing but open, nothing but quiet, nothing but green. He wanders a bit away from her, crouches down, picks her a little posy of wild violets, ties it off with a stem. Brings it back to her and she smiles, lifts it to her nose, inhales.

Wild violets, a sure sign of spring.

 


End file.
